I haul myself up and walk around to greet the fresh meat.
“Good morning, Mr. Lore,” she says in a smooth voice, just a tone or two deeper than I expected.
I give her hand a firm shake. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”
Leo glances between us, her hands tucked firmly behind her back. The stance pushes her breasts forward, their plump outline clearly visible through her fitted shirt. “Aeron, this is Gwen Cooper. She has ten years of experience as a personal assistant at CEO level, studied management and psychology at Columbia, and thinks she can make herself useful.”
“Very useful,” Gwen adds, her brown eyes warm with amusement.
There are two options here. Either I tell her to fuck off right this minute, or pretend that I’m completely unsurprised. Since I have no idea how big this woman’s mouth is—get your minds out of the gutter, sports fans—I’m leaning toward option two. The last thing I need right now, besides wasting time putting a new assistant through her paces, is bad press. So here goes nothing.
“You have some big shoes to fill. Come over here.” I walk back over to my desk, motioning for her to follow. “Have you seen this?”
Gwen comes to a stop beside me and blinks at the Go Fund Me page on the computer screen. “Unfortunately.”
“Good. So you know who you’re dealing with.” I give a single cough. “I mean, they forgot the part about the Illuminati, but aside from that, it’s solid work. I recognize quality journalism when I see it.”
“Of course,” she says, unsure.
“I’d like to make a donation myself, but Leo here thinks that would be a disaster.” I toss Leo a smarmy half-smile, and then simmer quietly in the wake of the scowl she shoots back. “I disagree. I want to wipe the grin off this motherfucker’s face.”
Gwen presses her glossy lips together. “But he suggests that you use money and power to get what you want. A donation would be exactly that.”
“Absolutely. But all in the name of charity.” I drop back into my chair and scoot forward to type. “Nobody can argue with charity, Gwen. Now. I was thinking I’d double the current fund, nothing too extravagant. What do you girls say?”
Leo rolls her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”
“Gwen?” I twist around to look at her, one brow arched with irrepressible curiosity.
The two women exchange glances; Leo is sardonic, Gwen slightly desperate. This is more fun than I anticipated.
“I think conscience is an abstract theory,” she says finally, “and you can no more lose one than you can have one in the first place.”
“Exactly.” I bash at the keys as if my fingers contain springing coils. “There. It’s not even ten a.m., and I’ve already given twelve grand to medical science.”
“That’s his good deed done for this quarter,” Leo says dryly.
“Kindly fuck off.”
She sighs.
“No, really. Gwen and I have some catching up to do.” I wave Leo off without looking up, and we wait until her heels click all the way to the door. “We have a love-hate relationship,” I mutter, “mostly owing to the fact that she shot me.”
Gwen swallows. “Right.”
“She’s the most perfect woman I know.”
“Well. That clears that up.”
“I’m fine, by the way. Stitched up like the victim of a bad pyramid scheme, but fully functional, I assure you.” I’ve regenerated, and now I have a new assistant. I’m Doctor fucking Who. “Do you know how to do a background check?”
“I can contact references. Run a credit check.”
In her time, she’s done far more than that. She just doesn’t want to let on before she knows it’s safe.
I twist around in my seat and give her my full attention. You’d miss it in a blink, but she just flinched a little—excellent. “At Lore Corp, we trade in information. We investigate. We hunt. As you can imagine, we have a rather extensive forensics department. I like to know things about people; it makes it easier to initiate a trade.”